Duckweed and algae problems are usually from excessive nutrient issues. Check where your run offs coming into the pond are coming from. You could be getting excessive nutrients from hog or cattle farms or just run off from fertilizers from the farm fields.
When algae in the pond dies and sinks to the bottom it uses up oxygen when it decays and this lack of oxygen is what kills the fish. Your aerator is nowhere near big enough for a pond of your size. You really need to hire an expert and measure the nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the water to see why there is so much algae, you have nutrients getting into that water somehow and excessive nutrients cause excessive algae growth which is the root of all your problems.
Yeah, that's why my suggestion last year was to harvest and compost the duckweed. I figure it would be like harvesting a hay field without fertilizing it. I wasn't of the impression that the pond was fed from somewhere, though. If it is, this is hopeless.
We all are on the same page. This is not something a pond specialist hasn't seen. I don't think it'll be cheap but ponds aren't. Good luck Evan love your videos.
As a twenty year pond owner I’ll throw in my two cents. My ponds are 7 & 40 acres. Your fish kill is defiantly not caused by your aeration system. In fact, you should have it running 24/7 to eliminate the stratification in your pond. It’s obvious by the duckweed that you have too many nutrients in your pond. The decaying vegetation off gassing is killing the fish. Running the aeration system 24/7 will help remove the gas from your water, but you really need to take care of the root of the problem which is the duckweed/vegetation caused by the high nutrients. Long term solution would be to use bacteria (example; Pond Block sold at TSC) and run your aerator. For immediate results you can use a pond company to kill off the duckweed, but this will shock your pond and cause more destructive off-gassing and kill any remaining fish. I don’t know, but suspect your pond has allot of farm runoff, so you’ll need to keep dosing it with the bacteria through the year (2-3 times) to keep it under control. For your pond I recommend using a pond dye too which will inhibit the plant growth in the future. For now, don’t worry about the fish until you can get your pond under control. There is also no need to stock the high rates recommended. I’ve dealt with total fish kills multiple times and small stock numbers repopulate a pond quickly. I’ve had 4ld bass within 3 years, add minnows to your restocking and use a 1/2 to 1 acre recommendation. I fought the same pond battle as you for years and employed a very good pond management company $3,600 - $8,000 annually. My problems were not solved with the pond management company due to the high cost, which I couldn’t afford $12,000 or justify. I added self management with 24/7 aeration and 3-4 annual bacteria treatments and pond dye. My pond had to much vegetation and off gassing prior. It took two years to totally solve the offgassing, but now I spend about $600 annually on self treating the pond plus my electric for the aeration and my house has a beautiful 7 acre pond view finally (6 years and counting).
If you're going to use electricity, I would build a small wetland filter on the side of the pond that can help air rate the water and it will build up a huge biological filter at the same time. You can create like a small cascading waterfall back to the main pond.
That is an excellent recommendation. On a sidebar…. The people that owned the pond before as we all have seen and they have experienced, put trash everywhere. I would NOT be surprised they put waste or trash in the pond itself or possibly on edge somewhere. Get a fish sonar and see what you can see on bottom and test the water. You need to know what you have causing the issue and what you need to balanced it. What beneficial bacteria you need as he said.
I am a certified scuba diver with 75+ dives. In rescue training we were taught “grid search”. Map your pond into grids and use sonar etc to discover what lies below. It likely has no visibility for a diver. Hell; I would not be surprised if there was a body or two down there the way those people were.
I saw a video a while back ...a young farmer who was using the duck weed to supplement his pigs feed.He was told his pork was very high in omega threes and other nutrients. An idea to keep the plant matter from mucking up the pond and feeding livestock free food . If you have lemons make lemonade.
Hey Evan, I think your county extension office would be a great place to start on knocking out the pond issues. They can help you solve this economically instead of fighting it.
We live in Illinois as well and have a farm pond. We run our our aerator 24/7 365. We had fish kills when we did not run them continually because there was so much sediment buildup on the bottom that as the leaves and stuff decomposed it basically became methane gas. I would encourage you to continually run them. Also we had a very bad duckweed problem the last several years. What we noticed is the overflow pipe that the water exits out of the pond was not working properly... once that was fixed anytime it rains now the duckweed flows out of the overflow pipe and we have literally had zero duckweed this year.
These have been only on during the day for 3 to 4 months. That isn't the cause or it would have happened earlier It was because the aerator broke apart. And a stream of continuous air was stirring up the bottom of the pond.
@CountryViewAcres You certainly could be accurate with the sediment being stirred up. However right now on one of my aerators it has been snapped off for about a year I just haven't pulled the line to replace the end and we have a lot of muck as well. I'm certainly no expert. Herman Brothers Pond Management in Central Illinois does a really good job and they travel to a lot of states if you were to ever want a second opinion. I really enjoy your channel I've been binge-watching a lot of your videos.
@morecowbell4u (Great handle) The underlying problem is always going to be too much soil nutrients in the wrong place. That’s going to take science to create farming fertilizers that have a stop-action or something… so they don’t continue to fertilize growth where they aren’t supposed to. Also, this guy doesn’t really seem all that motivated to really get ahead of the problem…. More video content perhaps ?🤔
I think I found EXACTLY what you're looking for!!! A company called KLM Ponds did a video over a year ago that talks about what likely happened to your pond. It's a video about over aeration of ponds and how you should only aerate at night. Also need to get the excessive duckweed under control with skimming it off regularly. youtube.com/@klmponds @CountryViewAcres
Grass carp will not control a duckweed problem unfortunately. As others have said Evan, it’s an excessive nutrient issue from run off. You should have been running the pond aeration 24 / 7 since. Duckweed is caused from excessive nutrients. 😢
Fish nets. He’s not really being very earnest about solving the problems…. meanwhile the little lake is getting worse + worse. Eventually just a slimy swamp.
Try your County Agent, Fish and Game Commission,or possibly a vet school in a university near you. Praying you get an answer. Don't be afraid to ask for help! Love your channel!
You might get a mechanical surface skimmer that floats on the surface of the pond and connects to a pump that drawa water and duckweed off the surface. The pump discharge is into a land basin with a screened discharge back to the pond. The duckweed stays behind in the basin and is periodically scooped out with a shovel or the tractor's bucket, ending up in the compost pile.
He did that last year? 5 gallon bucket with a lip cut out for the intake, pumped onto the.shore, used some square bales as a filter. He got a loader or bucket or two's worth. Composted most.
We have a much smaller pond but found pumping didn't clear the duck weed very well - far too much evaded the skimmer. Actively dragging a skimmer into the thickest areas of duck weed worked well but is very hands-on. The duck weed is very high in nutrients so skimming it off is making big inroads into the nutrients excess of the pond.
You need 24/7 aeration except in the winter. When the fish eat they poop, that poop rots and uses all the oxygen. Put in an air pump with an aerator. I recommend a sweetwater blower. The effect is to movewater over the surface. Spraying the water is not much better.
During calm, hot days, the pond develops temperature layers called “stratification.” The layer of water at the surface is exposed to the sun and warms quickly. This warm layer weighs less than the cool water below, so these layers do not mix. Surface layers contain high levels of oxygen produced by the phytoplankton. The cooler bottom layers are cut off from the surface layers and their sources of oxygen, so oxygen levels drop over time because of normal biological processes. In fact, these deep waters can actually develop an “oxygen demand,” which is like having negative oxygen levels.
I lived on a lake in northern WI that had weed problems. You need to be carefully when mowing the lawn so that the clippings don't get into the water. Also don't fertilize or put any chemicals on the lawn. They wanted us to have a grass called no mow, this is real thin blades of grass and shouldn't be mowed. A border around the pond can act as a filter. The fertility of the run off going into the pond is the source of your problems. You can make a floating barrier to coral up the duck weed using 2x4 fasten them together with something tough but flexible, heavy canvas, old fire hose sections. Look into what the cranberry harvesters use.
Evan, ponder over this suggestion: build a float to suspend the aerator below it so the aerator is not sitting on the bottom; attach an anchor (a large rock or some scrap metal) to the float so it does not wander off. I hope your pond will, sooner rather than later, give the two of you the pleasure of hours of fishing.
I like this idea, build sort of a diamond shaped cage in which to place the aerator in the middle. At the bottom of the diamond attach an anchor of some sort and at the top put a buoyancy device to keep the "diamond" pulled upright. Then attach your rope to the top of the diamond, along with the buoy, with the rope attached to the floating duck to keep the rope at the surface. The anchor, the diamond cage, the buoyancy device would all sink close to the bottom where you need the oxygen but stay out of the silt.
I doubt very much that one aerator malfunctioning is the culprit. You have way too much organic matter in that pond due probably to nitrogen runoff of fields that feed it. You’re probably going to have to resort to chemicals. Also get those aerators off the bottom, suspend them at least 2 feet off the bottom.
May be cheaper to consult wit a pond/lake management consultant. That can test the water and give you real solutions to correct management of the pond so your fish will flourish. Sorry for the loss and good luck. From your neighbors
The aerator could be kicking up H2S from the bottom muck. As the health of the pond improves, there will be less of that. For the duckweed... You should build a skimmer and compost that pondweed for your garden. Make a better version of that hose and you could clear it in chunks. Pull it to a prepared spot on shore with a mesh conveyor at the bottom of a V shaped bay. The conveyor would strain it and load it into a truck or bin without hassle, just keep pulling in the boom to keep feeding it in.. Dump it in piles to compost down a bit or spread it on the garden in the fall.
Maybe this can help you out, Ive had a similar problem of duckweed, in my pond up in Wisconsin. I bought 3-30 ft, minnow seine nets, tied them together ,my wife on one end , me on the other, and slowly dragged the nets across the pond. You wouldnt believe how much duck weed we pulled out, of the pond. I then bought a Koenders wind powered windmill, and thats been working for us since 2003
I did this method too but I couldn’t cure it without chemicals. The duckweed would spread back out in a few days for me. I do agree on opening up the pond though with a wind source! It blows it to the other side
I work in wastewater treatment where we deal with nutrients. Specifically ammonia and nitrate. Nitrification/Denitrification. Of course it's similiar but different. I don't think aeration alone will help. You probably have excess Nitrate (NO3) from whatever flow is going into the pond. My suggestion is to control your nutrient loading into the pond, if you can do that. If not maybe a constructed wetland to treat water going into the pond. Wetland vegetation will consume the nitrogen. Or figure out a way to denitrify the NO3. We do that in wastewater by having Anoxic zones. But we are using activated sludge....
I did too for 20 yrs....lots of algae/duckweed on our secondary clarifiers in the summer when plant flows were low and the weather was hot and sunny. Phosphate and nitrate concentrations increased with lower water dilution and caused algae blooms which causes low D.O. levels. Surface sprayers were used to clear the overflow weirs and regular cleaning with brushes until higher flows resumed.....
I also believe you need professional help with your pond. If nothing else you should put that pump on a timer setup so when you are away you don't have to worry. I am sorry for your lose of fish. I love fishing and really love either deep fry, smoked, foiled cooked ( like steaming or poach with lemon , butter and brown sugar).
Hi Evan, I have been think about your duckweed harvesting. Crazy idea.... Have you tried a leaf/path blower and blow the surface of the water from the boat to push the duckweed to the edge where you can collect with a pool scoop.
Having the same issues on our pond which is 1 acre. it's an older pond which has deep silt and muck. Weve been removing the duckweed manually and have added a fountain and aeration . One thing you could do is lime the lake with fine calcium carbonate ,this helps to reduce silt and that in turn reduces nitrates which the duckweed feeds on. Run the aerator 24/7. Its a massive learning curve and we are going through all this at the same timr so really look forward to your videos!
Thick silt and muck would tend to suggest PH crash or toxic algae bloom to me. (Certain bottom dwelling anaerobic bacteria excrete acids as waste. You can have a very rapid increase in acidity if those bacteria "bloom")
This is what my neighbor did: Tie a fishnet to the end of the boat and row . Have 1 person at the shore holding the other end of the net and collect the duckweed that way. Physicly remove all the collected duckweed from the net in to buckets before going on a duckweed fishnet hunt again.🙂
You need a lift pump to roll the water in pond over. So lifting the water from the bottom on to the top to airate the water by. Spray does not airate but water turn over does..
Another fish kill is a hard one. Sorry for your loss. The fountain idea is a good idea with coloured lights to give it a night time display. The fish will love it too with the added oxygen in the water.
Coloured lights would be sacrilege. It’s the countryside and they moved there because they enjoyed camping and nature and wanted to live in natural surroundings.
I'd recommend testing your water. I'm willing to bet your nitrite levels are high. If that's the case, there's not much you can do on a pond this size. Pray for a lot of rain.
Use some of the duck weed in your pig and chicken feed. Mix it in, it's filled with beneficial nutrients. You can skim some off daily to add to feed and start bringing that amount down. There must be some sort of run off issue causing algae blooms. Our area is BAD for blue green algae and fish kills, and I think its one of the reason grass carp are so prolific. I would bet your carp are fine.
Yeah, you have to mix it into the pig feed with other things, the farmer who uses duckweed for his pigs mixes it with milk, alfalfa, and different grains. But chickens, quail and ducks, surprise, love it as is.
Oh man I really feel for you both it’s no joke I’d feel sick not just losing the fish but the expense. I really hope you find a way to solve the duck weed issue Evan
Ponds don’t normally need an aerator. Take them out of your pond. You originally got the aerators to kill the duckweed, it didn’t work. The fish were fine before the use of the aerators.
Alligar diuron 80 Does wonders on duckweed but would not use if still watering the garden with the pond water. Can be found and at farm stores cheaper then online.
Looks like you will have to get in a flat bottom boat or a skamp or kiack and take a fine hole dip net and skim the top of the pond when it gets hot in late spring and fall until winter comes back unfortunately. Hope you figure it out! Pile the duck weed up somewhere for compost! Keep your head up!
Love your channel and your transparency! As others have stated, duckweed and algae are a symptom of the problem, not a problem by themselves. Removing the duckweed will help reduce residual nutrients, but reducing nutrient inflow is the only way to prevent recurrence. I’d hold off on replacing fish until the nutrients stabilize and the duckweed is gone for good. BTW, harvest the duckweed for your compost pile? Great fertilizer if balanced with some leaves, straw, etc. all the best!
We have lived on our place 33 years. We have a 3 acre pond that has always been clear enough to see the bottom. Until one of the big Mega farmers started farming the land across the road from our place . Applying tons of fertilizer and airplane spray on his crops. Now are pond is covered in duck weed and all the fish are dead. The run off from his field goes right in our pond. Says it is not his fault.( Can't do a thing.)
Hey Evan. Love the videos. Makes me miss growing up on a farm. Could you block your pond overflow pipe until the water level gets higher and then release it so the duckweed flows out? Just a thought!
So many things can cause fish kills. Definitely run the aeration as much as you can. The top 18" or so of the pond is prob 25 degrees hotter than the layer underneath it. I used a duck weed killer on our small pond from lake restoration and it worked great. I wish you good luck!
Have you tried beneficial bacteria? Beneficial bacteria comes in liquid or pellets or blocks for ponds. It can help eat up all the organic matter which in turn deprives algae of needed nutrients and clears up the water while also reducing the amount of muck at the bottom of the pond.
Yes, the duck weed is a gift really - it concentrates the nutrients in itself and floats where you can easily remove it. We had a concerted effort to clear it from our pond a few years ago and there was no sign of duck weed this year.
As long as the surface is covered in duck weed, it would seem that you’re spitting into the wind. The other culprit in many other similar situations is over-fertilizing the grass or fields within the drainage system that then runs off into the pond.
Aquarium owner here, I've never had a fishkill from duckweed. Even with 3" of duckweed on my 90 or 150 gallon tank, even with all but one of my filters down, never had it happen. The most common fishkill for aquariums tend to be PH crashes. I'd test the water for that first and foremost. I'd also aggressively skim off half the pond; Duckweed is great for pulling nitrates out of water, as well as many other contaminants. Next most common is toxic algae blooms. This is POSSIBLE with that much duckweed, but unlikely.
Maybe there’s a difference between a pond and an aquarium. You comment that you have always had at least one filter operating. Most ponds never have any filters operating. Do you also have an air bubbler? That’s really the crucial difference because the increased vegetation consumes the dissolved oxygen in the water thereby suffocating the fish. Try turning off all the aquarium equipment and see how your fish do.
Positioned at the far end of the pond setup 2 wheels 2 meters big with a light chain banding them with rakes custom made to scoop up pond weeds and dump onto land powered by a motor that runs all day. Every so often use tractor to remove pile of weed from under dumping area.
One time at Disney World, I noticed their aeration system was just under the surface 2-3 inches, nowhere near the bottom. The boom idea will work. You just need to build it right.
Evan I disagree with it being the diffuser, I think it’s the duckweed .. I found this --Duckweed colonies can cover the entire surface of a lake and block sunlight from reaching aquatic plants. This leads to oxygen depletion, which kills plants and suffocates fish. As such, duckweed is a common cause of dead zones in lakes. Weed control for lakes is an essential component of property management
Please do some more research on duckweed Evan . We have several lakes around us that have the diffusers and never had this problem . Just trying to help and not trying to be a butt or a know it all . Take Care and God Bless
Our pond used to get covered in duckweed also and the fix was to stop fertilizing our lawn along with aeration, it never gets covered anymore although there is a little along the far edge sometimes. Even the small amount of chemical fertilizer on a lawn migrates very fast to the lowest point which was our pond.
I’m so sorry guys I know you’ve tried really hard to solve this problem . Yep I think a fountain is the way to go I’m into fly fishing and one of my local lakes uses a fountain type of system in the lake to help.
The only way we got rid of the duck weed we waited until the wind blew it to one side of the pond and sprayed it with roundup we did it just a little at a time with small amounts of roundup and dye and its gone now and haven't had it for years
I had a similar problem with my pond. I found Tilapia good for eating duck weed. But I also bought some blue food dye called Blue Sea. I'd tried copper sulphate and biological treatments but neither of them worked. The blue food die worked really well.
We used a pond rake on our pond years ago and it worked. We pulled off so much that we had to use the front end loader and hauled it away from the pond
There are pond advisors who will come out and test your pond in different ways, then advise you the best way to get the results you want. If you had a severe illness you would not ask the local plumber how to cure it, so why not get a pro onto the problem.
@jonquinn… That’s what several are telling him “Get serious and get an expert!, or two!” But then, he couldn’t keep making videos about his pond problem if he actually fixed it, could he?
Ya need to get in contact with Daniel from Arms Family Homestead. He had a company from Illinois that deals with ponds come out to his place to evaluate his pond. They could give ya some info on what ya need to do to heal your pond.
That dirt on the aerator is actually beneficial bacteria, you need more places for it to thrive. I found you because i have a big duckweed problem in a pond that was used as water storage for a wineyard
Been a fan for awhile great channel do you think that the run off from the farm land around your homestead could be causing the problem (fertilizer and farm chemicals)
If you look at some commercial fisheries they have a paddle wheel flipping water in the ponds for the aeration . Duckweed grows that well because there is no surface movement so it thrives as it loves stagnant water.
If there was a You Tube award for people that repeat themselves in every video, Evan, you would win it hands down. But I still love watching every video.
One time I had a round bale speared with the tractor and raised up high to pull the spoiled bottom off of it for the compost pile. When I yanked the wet part, out dropped a big snake like you have, a northern water snake. It was quite the start! I leaned over with my hands on my knees checking it out and when I straightened up another big snake was coming out between the layers of the bale and going back into another layer in the bale just above my head. I grabbed the U it made and flung it thinking of how "fun" it would have been if it had dropped on my head.
Evan, you & Rebecca are going to have to get out there and skim the top of that water, its gonna be laborious but its necessary or you will be buying more fish again & again & again
you are correct in your comment about a lack of Oxygen. A pond needs Sunlight so photosynthesis can happen. Also, when you Mow around the pond and you mow your grass so that the discharge is going in the pond, that is a No, No.
What was wrong with that skimmer pump idea you had last year for removing the duck weed, that seemed to work. It would be cool to have a dump truck, pump the duck weed water into the truck, a siphon to remove the excess water from the bottom of the truck. When duck weed comes out the siphon you have a full truck, dump the duck weed in a compost and repeat. When duck weed level is low the grass carp should be able to deal with the duck weed. Just my 2 bobs worth. Even if you just did with IBC to see if it works. I started warch8ng these vids because of the original fish die off. I want to see this pond work.
Another idea, you could just pump the skimmings into a IBC tank, use a hose from the bottom of the IBC, to control the water height in the IBC. Cut an overflow in the IBC that falls to the ground or the bucket on the tractor. Since the duck weed floats only duckweed will fall into the bucket. The hose from the bottom can just flow harmlessly and duckweedlessly back to the pond.
Duckweed and algae problems are usually from excessive nutrient issues. Check where your run offs coming into the pond are coming from. You could be getting excessive nutrients from hog or cattle farms or just run off from fertilizers from the farm fields.
This would be my guess as well.
That's right
When algae in the pond dies and sinks to the bottom it uses up oxygen when it decays and this lack of oxygen is what kills the fish. Your aerator is nowhere near big enough for a pond of your size. You really need to hire an expert and measure the nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the water to see why there is so much algae, you have nutrients getting into that water somehow and excessive nutrients cause excessive algae growth which is the root of all your problems.
Id guess fertilizer run off
Yeah, that's why my suggestion last year was to harvest and compost the duckweed. I figure it would be like harvesting a hay field without fertilizing it. I wasn't of the impression that the pond was fed from somewhere, though. If it is, this is hopeless.
Time for a professional consult.
That's my recommendation as well.
He needs to leave it alone
That's what I was thinking too.
We all are on the same page. This is not something a pond specialist hasn't seen. I don't think it'll be cheap but ponds aren't. Good luck Evan love your videos.
💯
As a twenty year pond owner I’ll throw in my two cents. My ponds are 7 & 40 acres. Your fish kill is defiantly not caused by your aeration system. In fact, you should have it running 24/7 to eliminate the stratification in your pond. It’s obvious by the duckweed that you have too many nutrients in your pond. The decaying vegetation off gassing is killing the fish. Running the aeration system 24/7 will help remove the gas from your water, but you really need to take care of the root of the problem which is the duckweed/vegetation caused by the high nutrients. Long term solution would be to use bacteria (example; Pond Block sold at TSC) and run your aerator. For immediate results you can use a pond company to kill off the duckweed, but this will shock your pond and cause more destructive off-gassing and kill any remaining fish. I don’t know, but suspect your pond has allot of farm runoff, so you’ll need to keep dosing it with the bacteria through the year (2-3 times) to keep it under control. For your pond I recommend using a pond dye too which will inhibit the plant growth in the future. For now, don’t worry about the fish until you can get your pond under control. There is also no need to stock the high rates recommended. I’ve dealt with total fish kills multiple times and small stock numbers repopulate a pond quickly. I’ve had 4ld bass within 3 years, add minnows to your restocking and use a 1/2 to 1 acre recommendation. I fought the same pond battle as you for years and employed a very good pond management company $3,600 - $8,000 annually. My problems were not solved with the pond management company due to the high cost, which I couldn’t afford $12,000 or justify. I added self management with 24/7 aeration and 3-4 annual bacteria treatments and pond dye. My pond had to much vegetation and off gassing prior. It took two years to totally solve the offgassing, but now I spend about $600 annually on self treating the pond plus my electric for the aeration and my house has a beautiful 7 acre pond view finally (6 years and counting).
If you're going to use electricity, I would build a small wetland filter on the side of the pond that can help air rate the water and it will build up a huge biological filter at the same time. You can create like a small cascading waterfall back to the main pond.
That is an excellent recommendation. On a sidebar…. The people that owned the pond before as we all have seen and they have experienced, put trash everywhere. I would NOT be surprised they put waste or trash in the pond itself or possibly on edge somewhere. Get a fish sonar and see what you can see on bottom and test the water. You need to know what you have causing the issue and what you need to balanced it. What beneficial bacteria you need as he said.
I am a certified scuba diver with 75+ dives. In rescue training we were taught “grid search”. Map your pond into grids and use sonar etc to discover what lies below. It likely has no visibility for a diver. Hell; I would not be surprised if there was a body or two down there the way those people were.
Yup, stop guessing and consult an expert.
This comment nailed it.
You could use ur pond water to water a garden.
It would be magical
I saw a video a while back ...a young farmer who was using the duck weed to supplement his pigs feed.He was told his pork was very high in omega threes and other nutrients. An idea to keep the plant matter from mucking up the pond and feeding livestock free food . If you have lemons make lemonade.
Hey Evan, I think your county extension office would be a great place to start on knocking out the pond issues. They can help you solve this economically instead of fighting it.
We live in Illinois as well and have a farm pond. We run our our aerator 24/7 365. We had fish kills when we did not run them continually because there was so much sediment buildup on the bottom that as the leaves and stuff decomposed it basically became methane gas. I would encourage you to continually run them. Also we had a very bad duckweed problem the last several years. What we noticed is the overflow pipe that the water exits out of the pond was not working properly... once that was fixed anytime it rains now the duckweed flows out of the overflow pipe and we have literally had zero duckweed this year.
These have been only on during the day for 3 to 4 months. That isn't the cause or it would have happened earlier It was because the aerator broke apart. And a stream of continuous air was stirring up the bottom of the pond.
@CountryViewAcres You certainly could be accurate with the sediment being stirred up. However right now on one of my aerators it has been snapped off for about a year I just haven't pulled the line to replace the end and we have a lot of muck as well. I'm certainly no expert. Herman Brothers Pond Management in Central Illinois does a really good job and they travel to a lot of states if you were to ever want a second opinion. I really enjoy your channel I've been binge-watching a lot of your videos.
@morecowbell4u
(Great handle)
The underlying problem is always going to be too much soil nutrients in the wrong place. That’s going to take science to create farming fertilizers that have a stop-action or something… so they don’t continue to fertilize growth where they aren’t supposed to.
Also, this guy doesn’t really seem all that motivated to really get ahead of the problem…. More video content perhaps ?🤔
I think I found EXACTLY what you're looking for!!! A company called KLM Ponds did a video over a year ago that talks about what likely happened to your pond. It's a video about over aeration of ponds and how you should only aerate at night. Also need to get the excessive duckweed under control with skimming it off regularly. youtube.com/@klmponds @CountryViewAcres
Grass carp will not control a duckweed problem unfortunately. As others have said Evan, it’s an excessive nutrient issue from run off. You should have been running the pond aeration 24 / 7 since. Duckweed is caused from excessive nutrients. 😢
If you want to drag the pond. A hose full of water with pool noodles around it might work a lot better.
That is what I was also thinking.
i commented the same thing. Should have arrowed done a little more.
@@sams568 I'm sorry am I supposed to care that you commented the same thing already?
Fish nets.
He’s not really being very earnest about solving the problems…. meanwhile the little lake is getting worse + worse. Eventually just a slimy swamp.
Were fish dying with the duckweed in place?
Try your County Agent, Fish and Game Commission,or possibly a vet school in a university near you. Praying you get an answer. Don't be afraid to ask for help! Love your channel!
Sorry to hear about this but I think that your aerators need to be on 24/7 all year round .
I m so Sorry for your loss. Keep trying Something will work eventually
You might get a mechanical surface skimmer that floats on the surface of the pond and connects to a pump that drawa water and duckweed off the surface. The pump discharge is into a land basin with a screened discharge back to the pond. The duckweed stays behind in the basin and is periodically scooped out with a shovel or the tractor's bucket, ending up in the compost pile.
That’s a lot of compost.
He did that last year? 5 gallon bucket with a lip cut out for the intake, pumped onto the.shore, used some square bales as a filter. He got a loader or bucket or two's worth. Composted most.
We have a much smaller pond but found pumping didn't clear the duck weed very well - far too much evaded the skimmer. Actively dragging a skimmer into the thickest areas of duck weed worked well but is very hands-on. The duck weed is very high in nutrients so skimming it off is making big inroads into the nutrients excess of the pond.
The struggle can be real don’t give up my friend thanks for showing we are all learning at the same time.
You need 24/7 aeration except in the winter. When the fish eat they poop, that poop rots and uses all the oxygen. Put in an air pump with an aerator. I recommend a sweetwater blower. The effect is to movewater over the surface. Spraying the water is not much better.
Keep ur head up champ, u be fishin in no time.
During calm, hot days, the pond develops temperature layers called “stratification.” The layer of water at the surface is exposed to the sun and warms quickly. This warm layer weighs less than the cool water below, so these layers do not mix. Surface layers contain high levels of oxygen produced by the phytoplankton. The cooler bottom layers are cut off from the surface layers and their sources of oxygen, so oxygen levels drop over time because of normal biological processes. In fact, these deep waters can actually develop an “oxygen demand,” which is like having negative oxygen levels.
I lived on a lake in northern WI that had weed problems. You need to be carefully when mowing the lawn so that the clippings don't get into the water. Also don't fertilize or put any chemicals on the lawn. They wanted us to have a grass called no mow, this is real thin blades of grass and shouldn't be mowed. A border around the pond can act as a filter. The fertility of the run off going into the pond is the source of your problems. You can make a floating barrier to coral up the duck weed using 2x4 fasten them together with something tough but flexible, heavy canvas, old fire hose sections. Look into what the cranberry harvesters use.
Evan, ponder over this suggestion: build a float to suspend the aerator below it so the aerator is not sitting on the bottom; attach an anchor (a large rock or some scrap metal) to the float so it does not wander off.
I hope your pond will, sooner rather than later, give the two of you the pleasure of hours of fishing.
I like this idea, build sort of a diamond shaped cage in which to place the aerator in the middle. At the bottom of the diamond attach an anchor of some sort and at the top put a buoyancy device to keep the "diamond" pulled upright. Then attach your rope to the top of the diamond, along with the buoy, with the rope attached to the floating duck to keep the rope at the surface. The anchor, the diamond cage, the buoyancy device would all sink close to the bottom where you need the oxygen but stay out of the silt.
I doubt very much that one aerator malfunctioning is the culprit.
You have way too much organic matter in that pond due probably to nitrogen runoff of fields that feed it.
You’re probably going to have to resort to chemicals.
Also get those aerators off the bottom, suspend them at least 2 feet off the bottom.
Its not there is too much nutrients in the pond @teel6060
Dang. Tough hit. Sorry to hear this. Keep after it. Your place is beautiful. Good Luck.
May be cheaper to consult wit a pond/lake management consultant.
That can test the water and give you real solutions to correct management of the pond so your fish will flourish.
Sorry for the loss and good luck.
From your neighbors
The aerator could be kicking up H2S from the bottom muck. As the health of the pond improves, there will be less of that.
For the duckweed... You should build a skimmer and compost that pondweed for your garden. Make a better version of that hose and you could clear it in chunks. Pull it to a prepared spot on shore with a mesh conveyor at the bottom of a V shaped bay. The conveyor would strain it and load it into a truck or bin without hassle, just keep pulling in the boom to keep feeding it in.. Dump it in piles to compost down a bit or spread it on the garden in the fall.
Maybe this can help you out, Ive had a similar problem of duckweed, in my pond up in Wisconsin. I bought 3-30 ft, minnow seine nets, tied them together ,my wife on one end , me on the other, and slowly dragged the nets across the pond. You wouldnt believe how much duck weed we pulled out, of the pond. I then bought a Koenders wind powered windmill, and thats been working for us since 2003
I did this method too but I couldn’t cure it without chemicals. The duckweed would spread back out in a few days for me. I do agree on opening up the pond though with a wind source! It blows it to the other side
Awesome video, thank you.
I work in wastewater treatment where we deal with nutrients. Specifically ammonia and nitrate. Nitrification/Denitrification. Of course it's similiar but different. I don't think aeration alone will help. You probably have excess Nitrate (NO3) from whatever flow is going into the pond. My suggestion is to control your nutrient loading into the pond, if you can do that. If not maybe a constructed wetland to treat water going into the pond. Wetland vegetation will consume the nitrogen. Or figure out a way to denitrify the NO3. We do that in wastewater by having Anoxic zones. But we are using activated sludge....
I did too for 20 yrs....lots of algae/duckweed on our secondary clarifiers in the summer when plant flows were low and the weather was hot and sunny. Phosphate and nitrate concentrations increased with lower water dilution and caused algae blooms which causes low D.O. levels. Surface sprayers were used to clear the overflow weirs and regular cleaning with brushes until higher flows resumed.....
I also believe you need professional help with your pond.
If nothing else you should put that pump on a timer setup so when you are away you don't have to worry.
I am sorry for your lose of fish. I love fishing and really love either deep fry, smoked, foiled cooked ( like steaming or poach with lemon , butter and brown sugar).
That’s so sad, you both love to fish, you need to do whatever it takes. So sorry. Love you guys.
Hi Evan, I have been think about your duckweed harvesting. Crazy idea.... Have you tried a leaf/path blower and blow the surface of the water from the boat to push the duckweed to the edge where you can collect with a pool scoop.
Having the same issues on our pond which is 1 acre. it's an older pond which has deep silt and muck. Weve been removing the duckweed manually and have added a fountain and aeration . One thing you could do is lime the lake with fine calcium carbonate ,this helps to reduce silt and that in turn reduces nitrates which the duckweed feeds on. Run the aerator 24/7. Its a massive learning curve and we are going through all this at the same timr so really look forward to your videos!
Thick silt and muck would tend to suggest PH crash or toxic algae bloom to me. (Certain bottom dwelling anaerobic bacteria excrete acids as waste. You can have a very rapid increase in acidity if those bacteria "bloom")
So sorry about your pond and the fish. Hope and pray for a solution for your problem. 😢💕🙏
This is what my neighbor did:
Tie a fishnet to the end of the boat and row . Have 1 person at the shore holding the other end of the net and collect the duckweed that way. Physicly remove all the collected duckweed from the net in to buckets before going on a duckweed fishnet hunt again.🙂
You need a lift pump to roll the water in pond over. So lifting the water from the bottom on to the top to airate the water by. Spray does not airate but water turn over does..
Not in the short term. It can cause an acute oxygen deficit with the turnover.
Another fish kill is a hard one. Sorry for your loss. The fountain idea is a good idea with coloured lights to give it a night time display. The fish will love it too with the added oxygen in the water.
Coloured lights would be sacrilege. It’s the countryside and they moved there because they enjoyed camping and nature and wanted to live in natural surroundings.
A fountain will clog, with that much algea/duck weed, and will be a maintenance headache!
Your frustration is so warranted, I can only imagine. I hope you get it figured out, I'm sure you will actually. Good luck.
I'd recommend testing your water. I'm willing to bet your nitrite levels are high. If that's the case, there's not much you can do on a pond this size. Pray for a lot of rain.
Use some of the duck weed in your pig and chicken feed. Mix it in, it's filled with beneficial nutrients. You can skim some off daily to add to feed and start bringing that amount down.
There must be some sort of run off issue causing algae blooms. Our area is BAD for blue green algae and fish kills, and I think its one of the reason grass carp are so prolific. I would bet your carp are fine.
Just so you know, duckweed is an excellent protein source for livestock animals. So if you can skim it off you can give it to your cows/pigs.
I think he tried that, they did not eat it, but the pigs ate a little.
Yeah, you have to mix it into the pig feed with other things, the farmer who uses duckweed for his pigs mixes it with milk, alfalfa, and different grains. But chickens, quail and ducks, surprise, love it as is.
Third time's a charm!! You sure have given the pond a ton of attention..........and it can be sooo pretty!! Good Luck!
Oh man I really feel for you both it’s no joke I’d feel sick not just losing the fish but the expense. I really hope you find a way to solve the duck weed issue Evan
Your neighbor fields are doing pretty good look how healthy the crops are .
Ponds don’t normally need an aerator. Take them out of your pond. You originally got the aerators to kill the duckweed, it didn’t work. The fish were fine before the use of the aerators.
Hi... Evan and Rebecca thanks you for showing your video homestead keep it up bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋👍👍👍
Alligar diuron 80 Does wonders on duckweed but would not use if still watering the garden with the pond water. Can be found and at farm stores cheaper then online.
Sorry to hear the fish got killed off again. Good luck in resolving the issue.
Looks like you will have to get in a flat bottom boat or a skamp or kiack and take a fine hole dip net and skim the top of the pond when it gets hot in late spring and fall until winter comes back unfortunately. Hope you figure it out! Pile the duck weed up somewhere for compost! Keep your head up!
Love your channel and your transparency!
As others have stated, duckweed and algae are a symptom of the problem, not a problem by themselves. Removing the duckweed will help reduce residual nutrients, but reducing nutrient inflow is the only way to prevent recurrence. I’d hold off on replacing fish until the nutrients stabilize and the duckweed is gone for good. BTW, harvest the duckweed for your compost pile? Great fertilizer if balanced with some leaves, straw, etc. all the best!
We have lived on our place 33 years. We have a 3 acre pond that has always been clear enough to see the bottom. Until one of the big Mega farmers started farming the land across the road from our place . Applying tons of fertilizer and airplane spray on his crops. Now are pond is covered in duck weed and all the fish are dead. The run off from his field goes right in our pond. Says it is not his fault.( Can't do a thing.)
So sorry this happened to you. It must be frustrating beyond. Enough to make one feel like moving.
A fountain does sound like an idea. Good luck.
Hey Evan. Love the videos. Makes me miss growing up on a farm. Could you block your pond overflow pipe until the water level gets higher and then release it so the duckweed flows out? Just a thought!
So many things can cause fish kills. Definitely run the aeration as much as you can. The top 18" or so of the pond is prob 25 degrees hotter than the layer underneath it. I used a duck weed killer on our small pond from lake restoration and it worked great. I wish you good luck!
Have you tried beneficial bacteria?
Beneficial bacteria comes in liquid or pellets or blocks for ponds. It can help eat up all the organic matter which in turn deprives algae of needed nutrients and clears up the water while also reducing the amount of muck at the bottom of the pond.
I assure you there's already beneficial bacteria in that pond, and what they do is convert ammonia to nitrates, which plants then consume.
What a bummer . Good luck!
Pool noodles duct taped together with a rope ran through all of them might work to drag the duck weed out.
slide them over that garden hose!
Yes, the duck weed is a gift really - it concentrates the nutrients in itself and floats where you can easily remove it. We had a concerted effort to clear it from our pond a few years ago and there was no sign of duck weed this year.
sorry to hear about your pond,after all the work u have done to try to get rid of the duck weed
As long as the surface is covered in duck weed, it would seem that you’re spitting into the wind.
The other culprit in many other similar situations is over-fertilizing the grass or fields within the drainage system that then runs off into the pond.
Aquarium owner here, I've never had a fishkill from duckweed. Even with 3" of duckweed on my 90 or 150 gallon tank, even with all but one of my filters down, never had it happen. The most common fishkill for aquariums tend to be PH crashes. I'd test the water for that first and foremost. I'd also aggressively skim off half the pond; Duckweed is great for pulling nitrates out of water, as well as many other contaminants.
Next most common is toxic algae blooms. This is POSSIBLE with that much duckweed, but unlikely.
Maybe there’s a difference between a pond and an aquarium.
You comment that you have always had at least one filter operating. Most ponds never have any filters operating.
Do you also have an air bubbler? That’s really the crucial difference because the increased vegetation consumes the dissolved oxygen in the water thereby suffocating the fish. Try turning off all the aquarium equipment and see how your fish do.
Positioned at the far end of the pond setup 2 wheels 2 meters big with a light chain banding them with rakes custom made to scoop up pond weeds and dump onto land powered by a motor that runs all day. Every so often use tractor to remove pile of weed from under dumping area.
Just a thought: if you have a fish farm near you check what they use to air rate their ponds or maybe google. 😊❤. Love your vids
Appreciate your honesty. Sorry to hear your hard work has gone sour.
One time at Disney World, I noticed their aeration system was just under the surface 2-3 inches, nowhere near the bottom. The boom idea will work. You just need to build it right.
Still want work to much nutrients in the pond it don't matter wat u do with the aeration system
Don’t give up on the aeration it is great for your pond. Trust me. I’ve been doing this a long time.
Evan I disagree with it being the diffuser, I think it’s the duckweed .. I found this --Duckweed colonies can cover the entire surface of a lake and block sunlight from reaching aquatic plants. This leads to oxygen depletion, which kills plants and suffocates fish. As such, duckweed is a common cause of dead zones in lakes. Weed control for lakes is an essential component of property management
Please do some more research on duckweed Evan . We have several lakes around us that have the diffusers and never had this problem . Just trying to help and not trying to be a butt or a know it all . Take Care and God Bless
Exactly....
Our pond used to get covered in duckweed also and the fix was to stop fertilizing our lawn along with aeration, it never gets covered anymore although there is a little along the far edge sometimes. Even the small amount of chemical fertilizer on a lawn migrates very fast to the lowest point which was our pond.
I’m so sorry guys I know you’ve tried really hard to solve this problem . Yep I think a fountain is the way to go I’m into fly fishing and one of my local lakes uses a fountain type of system in the lake to help.
Float a few straw bails in the pond. The bails will absorb excess nitrogen, that will reduce plant growth.
The heavy bloom could be from high nutrient content from runoff from farm land. I would have water tested.
A water test should be real easy.
Might try wrapping the garden hose with pool noodles for a larger diameter
Time to call in an expert. Seems like the more you try the worse it gets.
Wow. Very interesting and heartbreaking story. 😢
The only way we got rid of the duck weed we waited until the wind blew it to one side of the pond and sprayed it with roundup we did it just a little at a time with small amounts of roundup and dye and its gone now and haven't had it for years
Fountain is a great idea
I had a similar problem with my pond. I found Tilapia good for eating duck weed. But I also bought some blue food dye called Blue Sea. I'd tried copper sulphate and biological treatments but neither of them worked. The blue food die worked really well.
Evan I just saw a video using silt fencing to skim the top of the water. Not expensive at all.
put a temp extension on the overflow pipe let it raise then remove it .flushing the pond surface
I love this idea!
Suggestion get some of them foam noodle things link them together and make a floating boom to round up bloom
LOL I like Rebecca's attitude. IE Nothing's happening until that snake pit is mowed and if the zero turn goes in, so be it.
It was hilarious watching you row the boat at fast-forward speed!
We used a pond rake on our pond years ago and it worked. We pulled off so much that we had to use the front end loader and hauled it away from the pond
Using the pond rake was a lot of hard work but it worked. We added to float noodles to our rake since it was cheaper than buying a floating rake
Get a hold of the nearest water conservation dept., have them come out, they should help you out.
There are pond advisors who will come out and test your pond in different ways, then advise you the best way to get the results you want. If you had a severe illness you would not ask the local plumber how to cure it, so why not get a pro onto the problem.
@jonquinn…
That’s what several are telling him “Get serious and get an expert!, or two!”
But then, he couldn’t keep making videos about his pond problem if he actually fixed it, could he?
Thanks for video 😎
Ya need to get in contact with Daniel from Arms Family Homestead. He had a company from Illinois that deals with ponds come out to his place to evaluate his pond. They could give ya some info on what ya need to do to heal your pond.
That dirt on the aerator is actually beneficial bacteria, you need more places for it to thrive.
I found you because i have a big duckweed problem in a pond that was used as water storage for a wineyard
Been a fan for awhile great channel do you think that the run off from the farm land around your homestead could be causing the problem (fertilizer and farm chemicals)
If you look at some commercial fisheries they have a paddle wheel flipping water in the ponds for the aeration . Duckweed grows that well because there is no surface movement so it thrives as it loves stagnant water.
If there was a You Tube award for people that repeat themselves in every video, Evan, you would win it hands down. But I still love watching every video.
don't be rude
One time I had a round bale speared with the tractor and raised up high to pull the spoiled bottom off of it for the compost pile. When I yanked the wet part, out dropped a big snake like you have, a northern water snake. It was quite the start! I leaned over with my hands on my knees checking it out and when I straightened up another big snake was coming out between the layers of the bale and going back into another layer in the bale just above my head. I grabbed the U it made and flung it thinking of how "fun" it would have been if it had dropped on my head.
Evan, you & Rebecca are going to have to get out there and skim the top of that water, its gonna be laborious but its necessary or you will be buying more fish again & again & again
Glad I clicked on this. I never knew you had to worry much about ponds.
you are correct in your comment about a lack of Oxygen. A pond needs Sunlight so photosynthesis can happen. Also, when you Mow around the pond and you mow your grass so that the discharge is going in the pond, that is a No, No.
Looks like you need a bit of pump to pump more water to move the water around. Good luck if I had a lake like that
Get your local fishery to come out and survey your pond before you do anything else.
Wow! What a Disappointment!! I'm So Sorry!! I think your right about having fountains instead!! Have a Great Weekend!! 🙂🌻
Is there a way to dredge all the muck from your pond floor? Maybe there is just too much accumulation of sludge on the bottom.
Maybe put the sludge on the hay fields?
Oh no.😢 I'm so sorry this happened again
Just started watching the video.
County extension agent!
Those looked like young boa constrictors, an invasive species.!!😉
Quickly tapered tail on snake sure looked to be poisonous. :O
It's a common watersnake non-venomous
What I could see , looked like it had a triangular head too .I hate em all anyways !!!!
Wow that's heartbreaking, man. Sorry to see this.
What was wrong with that skimmer pump idea you had last year for removing the duck weed, that seemed to work. It would be cool to have a dump truck, pump the duck weed water into the truck, a siphon to remove the excess water from the bottom of the truck. When duck weed comes out the siphon you have a full truck, dump the duck weed in a compost and repeat. When duck weed level is low the grass carp should be able to deal with the duck weed. Just my 2 bobs worth. Even if you just did with IBC to see if it works. I started warch8ng these vids because of the original fish die off. I want to see this pond work.
Another idea, you could just pump the skimmings into a IBC tank, use a hose from the bottom of the IBC, to control the water height in the IBC. Cut an overflow in the IBC that falls to the ground or the bucket on the tractor. Since the duck weed floats only duckweed will fall into the bucket. The hose from the bottom can just flow harmlessly and duckweedlessly back to the pond.
Call your local fish and wildlife dept. have them check your pond, and provide their thoughts?